


phosphenes

by warsfeil



Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 09:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17847008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warsfeil/pseuds/warsfeil
Summary: (the bright spots left in your vision when you close your eyes.)In which Sougo is hired for a commercial and a few things go wrong (but more things go right).





	phosphenes

**Author's Note:**

> happy late birthday slash going away present to one of my best friends! ♥ take this tender ryuusou and go safely. i'm sorry that i'm incapable of editing anything to save my life.

“...and Nagi-san has an offer for a new modeling campaign,” Tsumugi reads from the clipboard in her hand, going down the itemized list of everyone’s major assignments for the week. “And Sougo-san, it was unexpected, but a call came in for a commercial for you!” 

“A commercial?” Sougo repeats back. It isn’t that unusual, he supposes, but it’s unusual for a day when he knows Tamaki is busy with other work. 

“Yes!” Tsumugi says, and her enthusiasm is nothing if not contagious. “It seems they asked for you specifically! It’ll be a commercial for… let’s see… a limited edition summer flavor for a new beer, and they’ve already hired Tsunashi-san on for the same advertisement!”

Sougo Ousaka, aged 20 years and an unimportant amount of days, dies instantly.

-

Sougo resists the urge to run his palms down his thighs for the eighteenth time, because rubbing his palms on the faux-leather pants they’ve put him in does more damage than good, and his palms aren’t actually sweaty to begin with, he’s just so nervous that he feels like he’s about to vibrate into another plane of existence.

“Here.” There’s a can of beer being held out to him -- cold to the touch, condensation already welling up on the aluminium surface -- and the assistant holding it out is flashing Sougo a smile. “It’s complimentary. You can’t drink the ones you’ll be on camera with, for consistency.”

“Oh,” Sougo replies, taking the can. Now his palms are wet. “Thank you. Of course.” The interior of Sougo’s mind is less a hamster on a wheel and more a miniaturized version of Sougo himself frantically running through all the reasons why things are going to go wrong (Sougo will forget his lines; Ryuu will abruptly realize that Sougo isn’t nearly good enough to perform in a commercial alongside him; the entire lighting display will fall and kill both of them) that leaves absolutely no room for normal, human considerations. 

Sougo smiles, belatedly, but the assistant has already moved on, walking over to help with the set-up for the commercial. 

Sougo looks at the can. _If the lighting display falls, I’ll sacrifice myself for Ryuu,_ Sougo informs himself, and opens the can.

He downs half of it before he can stop himself. 

“Wow, you must really like--” Ryuu starts, and then breaks off, because Sougo immediately chokes on the drink. He chooses to swallow rather than anything, half out of politesse and half because he really _would_ die on the spot if he spit beer onto _Ryuunosuke Tsunashi_.

“Hey, are you okay?” Ryuu asks, and then his _hand is on Sougo’s back_ , alternating between tapping lightly and rubbing in small, soothing circles.

“I’m,” Sougo manages, red faced, embarrassed, and more light headed than he has reason to be. “I’m.” There’s a few people staring at him, of course, and he registers that with a faint, peripheral awareness that is filed away so that it can come back and haunt him at three in the morning when he can’t sleep. Right now, all he can register is Ryuu’s eyes looking at him in concern, head tilted to the side, his hand a warm sun on Sougo’s skin that burns straight through the flimsy fabric of his shirt.

“I’m.”

Ryuu takes the can from Sougo, using the hand on his back to guide him over to one of the half dozen empty chairs that litter the far wall of the studio. “I’ll get you some water,” Ryuu says, once Sougo is seated. He sets the can down and walks away, and Sougo feels his absence like he has been plunged into subzero ice water.

He’s already made such a mess of things, he’s already ruined things and they haven’t even started shooting--

“Here,” Ryuu says, and there’s a water bottle in front of him, the cap already twisted off, and Ryuu’s eyebrows are still drawn together with concern as he looks down at Sougo. 

“Thank you,” Sougo says, and takes the water. If he lets his fingers brush a little more than strictly necessary against Ryuu’s, no one can hold that against him, right? Oh, he shouldn’t have drank half that beer. 

Sougo knocks back a third of the water bottle, instead, and tries to ignore the way it sinks like an anchor into the bottom of his stomach.

Ryuu laughs. “Were you just thirsty?” 

“Um,” Sougo says. There’s a series of responses springing into his mind, ranging from polite to things straight out of an adult DVD that Sougo will never admit to having watched, and Sougo wonders if his hands are actually sweating yet. “I didn’t have a chance to grab anything before I left the dorm.”

It is not, technically speaking, a lie.

“Ah, you’d better drink up,” Ryuu says, gesturing at the water bottle. Sougo takes another sip, obediently, because today is apparently just a day when he drinks everything handed to him. “The lights’re pretty hot up there-- I mean, you know that!” 

Ryuu laughs again, his hand winding up to scratch at the back of his neck, and Sougo understands with the perfect, sparkling clarity that can only happen when one has shotgunned half of a 9% ABV beer, that Ryuu is also nervous.

Sougo doesn’t know _why_ ; he is fairly certain that Ryuunosuke Tsunashi (to say nothing of the rest of Trigger) was individually set on earth by God to bring hope to mankind, but he still understands nervousness. 

“I’ve never done a commercial like this before,” Sougo says, and he manages to keep his voice as calm and level as can be reasonably expected of him. “This sort of thing -- usually it would go to Tamaki-kun, but since he’s underage…”

“I didn’t even think about it going to him,” Ryuu says, and he looks startled at the idea, like he’d never considered it before in his life.

“Eh? But -- Tamaki-kun is the one that everyone thinks is the sexiest,” Sougo says. It’s pure fact; it’s in all the rankings. 

“I think you’re plenty sexy,” Ryuu says, and then as the silence stretches out between them (even louder than it might normally be, as all of Sougo’s vital functions such as breathing and his heartbeat have completely stopped), slowly turns red and raises his hands, laughing in nervousness. “I mean-- you know, I don’t really think I’m the kind of guy you’d want for these kind of advertisements, either, but everyone says I’m…” Ryuu’s face is more than a little pink, and he glances to the side, embarrassed. “...the ero beast, right?”

“I think you’re very ero,” Sougo says, earnestly, leaning a little too far forward.

Very quickly, Sougo realizes several things: 

1\. So that he didn’t lose his balance, his hand is on Ryuu’s thigh, splayed across the dark denim like it belongs there.  
2\. Ryuu’s hand has gone, automatically, to Sougo’s shoulder, as if to help him keep his balance. It is, as before, very warm.  
3\. Sougo’s face is very, very close to Ryuu’s.

“Ah,” Sougo says, but even the version of himself that blurts out every possible tragedy has been silenced by the fact that Sougo can see the exact place where Ryuu has unintentionally licked off the lip gloss carefully applied by the makeup artist.

“Man, it’s a good thing you two get along so well,” the director says, hitting his hand against his thigh. 

“Ah,” Sougo says.

“Oh,” Ryuu says. 

“The girl we had coming in is stuck at the airport,” the director continues, as though they hadn’t said anything, which -- in all fairness -- they really hadn’t. “Said she won’t be here for another _four hours_ , and we just don’t have that kind of time. Studio’s only booked for another hour.”

Sougo nods, his stomach sinking to somewhere around the molten core of the earth. This is his fault, somehow, probably. They’ll have to cancel the entire commercial, and it’s all because -- because -- because Sougo’s hand is still planted on Ryuu’s thigh? 

“...we’ll just have Ousaka-san stand in,” the director is saying, and Sougo blinks.

“You’re going to have two guys star in it?” the assistant asks, a little incredulously, around his armful of props.

The director nods, full of the kind of self-assured confidence Sougo can only dream of having. “Yeah. They’re idols popular with girls, right? We’re marketing this to women, and my daughter says romance between two guys is all the rage.”

The assistant stares. 

Sougo squeezes the water bottle so hard it splashes out over his fingers. 

“What?”

-

In the end, the script is entirely rewritten, the costumes are changed, and they’re left with exactly thirty-four minutes to try and film the entire commercial.

Sougo doesn’t remember any of it. It’s a shame, he thinks, because watching the playback on the monitor, he’d certainly _like_ to remember the feel of Ryuu’s arm around him, the cool lighting like a summer night playing across their skin.

Instead, he mostly remembers passing out.

“Hey,” Ryuu says, as he steps into the dressing room. “Are you feeling better? Do you need some more water, or--”

“I’m alright,” Sougo says, and it’s true: he’s too tired and too embarrassed to feel sick anymore. “I’m sorry to have caused you so much trouble.”

“What are you talking about?” Ryuu asks. He drops onto the couch next to Sougo. “You did great. You’re just like Tenn, you know -- always pushing yourself even when you don’t feel well.”

Sougo blinks, because he isn’t sure how he should take that, exactly, but Ryuu is looking at him with a fond smile that Sougo doesn’t think he can possibly deserve. 

“I barely remember doing any of it,” Sougo confesses, a little embarrassed. There weren’t any blankets available in the dressing room, of course, so it’s just his jacket spread out over him, and that’s what he presses his hands down onto. 

“Because you were nervous?” 

“Mm, I think so,” Sougo says. He risks a look back at Ryuu again, but Ryuu is still smiling at him, easy and casual. 

“The first time I had to do a commercial like this I thought I was going to be sick,” Ryuu says, and Sougo tries to imagine: Ryuu as a person, as someone as nervous as Sougo himself, afraid of making a mistake, afraid of all the terrible things that could come to pass.

“But you always did them so well,” Sougo says, earnestly; he leans forward again, nails scraping over the fabric of his jacket. 

“So did you,” Ryuu says, reaching out -- hesitating -- and then placing his hand on Sougo’s, pressing it back to flat against his jacket. “You were -- um. Sexy.”

And then, Sougo understands. It blossoms through him as radiant as Ryuu’s smile, and he thinks: _This can’t be real._ It’s the same feeling that he felt when the concert tickets sold out in under a minute; the same breathlessness that comes after a performance in front of a cheering crowd; the same weightlessness that comes from being given something you don’t deserve. 

Does confessing that you find someone sexy count as a love confession? 

“You were too,” Sougo says, before he can take it back. “You always are.”

Ryuu doesn’t move his hand from where it is on Sougo’s, but he raises his other hand up, scratches at his cheek in embarrassment. “Everyone says that.”

“Everyone,” Sougo says, softly, “always says that I’m soothing.”

“Does that mean I’m the first to call you sexy?” Ryuu says, and he isn’t quite making eye contact with Sougo, gazing a point on the far wall.

“Yes,” Sougo says, immediately, and then: “Does that mean I can be the first one to call you cute?” 

“Oh,” Ryuu says, and he sounds genuinely disappointed, “No. My mom called me cute all the time when I was little.”

Sougo can’t help it. He laughs, harder than he means to, hard enough that he’s doubled over on the couch, one arm around his stomach and the other still on his jacket, still pressed down under the steady heat of Ryuu’s skin.

Ryuu laughs, too: surprised at first, and then genuine, contagious and wrapping all the way around Sougo.

Inside Sougo’s mind, there’s nothing but the sound of that laugh and the feel of Ryuu’s hand. There are no tragedies to be written or crises to be averted.

They stop laughing, and Ryuu is looking at Sougo with what Sougo can now recognize as nervousness, a mirror image of how Sougo feels on a regular day. Ryuu’s eyes draw Sougo in until he could never hope to come out, and he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to break the spell that has made this into reality, doesn’t want to deny the fate that twisted to allow him something so beautiful.

Ryuu’s hand reaches up, slowly, a deliberate motion designed so that it could be moved away. Sougo doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe, for a second; his lungs kickstart back into motion when Ryuu makes contact with his skin, hand splaying across Sougo’s cheek.

“That means I’ll just have to find something else to call you,” Sougo says. “Something that no one else has.”

“I’d like that,” Ryuu says, and kisses him.

-

The next time that Tsumugi tells Sougo he has another commercial booked, he isn’t surprised. The last one exploded into more popularity than anyone had anticipated, fueled by a viral web presence. He’d never seen so much fanart drawn of himself before, of _Ryuu_ before. The fact that they’d want another commercial to continue that success on is only good business sense.

“I’ll do my best,” Sougo promises, and Tsumugi smiles at him, turning to give Yamato his next assignment.

Sougo saves one of the pictures drawn in response to the first commercial, downloading it to his phone. It’s pretty accurate, save for the absence of a freckle that he knows resides on the inside of Ryuu’s left thigh. 

It’s something that only he knows. 

The next time they meet, Sougo calls him princely, and watches the way Ryuu’s blush travels all the way across the bridge of his nose. It isn’t the first time Ryuu has been called that, either, but Sougo is enjoying every wrong answer, too.

**Author's Note:**

> me, everytime i go to write an i7 fic: and this time i'm going to write something explicit.  
> me, a couple thousand words later: ...explicitly cute and safe for work, i guess!
> 
> you can find me @warsfeils on twitter if you want to cry about how beautiful ryuunosuke tsunashi is with me


End file.
